Q4 2017 – Quarterly Review of Financial Goals

It might be 2018 already – happy new year! – but there’s still time for me to look back at the past quarter and, yes, year. The yearly one is soon to come, but let’s crack on with the quarterly review. A quick reminder below of my Q4 goals, with a summary of how I did on each. It’s clear the new business took priority over this blog once again…

Cat-sitting business – more clients!

Aim for 3 new clients in the quarter. Yes! It turns out that cat owners like to get away at Xmas, which means that I’ve been busy over the past couple of weeks with new clients.

More online marketing. I’ve done google, and yell.com, I’ll now try a few others such as Thomson and gumtree. No! I hadn’t realised until now that I hadn’t done this, I think it slipped off my radar because I took some early bookings for Xmas, and was happy with the level of work I had queued up. I will do this though to try and get new business more evenly spaced out over the year.

Open a business bank account. No! I am going to stick with the account I already have for the time being.

Register with HMRC as having self-employed as well as employed income. Yes! I had questions with the online form they encourage you to use, so ended up calling them and they did it for me over the phone, all relatively painless.

Blogging – more focus

Re-organise the blog so that it’s more targeted at readers also interested in saving for retirement. No!

Make it easier to find information, for example a ‘Resources’ page. No!

Write more regularly, aiming for a post at the start of each month. Sort of! Start-of-month writing didn’t materialise, but I did manage a couple of end-of-month posts, for October and November, and this one could (maybe) loosely be called a (late) December end-of-month post, so does that count? Even if I add in a couple of other posts from October, I can hardly be called a prolific blogger, but maybe I’m getting closer to being regular..?!

Food bank volunteering. This wasn’t a Q4 17 goal, but taking part in the UK Money Bloggers’ reverse advent calendar campaign meant that I got involved in a small way with the work of my local food bank, which I’m pleased about and would not have done if it hadn’t have been for my (irregular, incomplete…) blogging!

Other

Help my husband with a new business he is launching in January. No! I’ve not been much help, he’s still got work to do, but he’s making progress….

Open a new annual savings accounts with First Direct, as my existing one has ended. Yes! I was anticipating a lengthy questionnaire or telephone call, but this was one of those rare occasions when a task was easier than expected. It actually took about 5 minutes online, consisting of not much more than logging in and clicking ‘apply’. Fantastic!

Review pension, as it will be a year since I increased my pension contributions. Yes! This is a highlight of my year, my pension has increased 38% in the past year, and doubled in the past 2 years! I was starting from a low base, and have a long way to go, but I’m thrilled to bits to see it double because of my increased contributions (and a little bit of return) since I’ve been blogging and focused.

Continue with house renovations – decide how much we are comfortable spending on a new kitchen, and if we can afford a new roof. No! We’ve decided on a kitchen design, now we need to finalise costs, but we’re still undecided about the roof. Do we spend our savings now and be done with it, or repair now and hope we can last several more years before a new roof is needed? I still don’t know…

Once again, it’s clear that my time has been taken up with the cat-sitting business, not this blog! I’m a bit disappointed I never seem to get around to doing what I’d like with this blog, but I’m not going to beat myself up about it and that’s what next year’s goals can be for!